Windows 7: Odd & Ends

by JL Beeken on 10-21-2010

Here are some odds & ends about Windows 7 as I begin to get used to it.

I have it on good faith from my real-life computer tech in town that Windows 7 is good. It makes good use of the 64-bit architecture and uses system resources well although, with a quad-core and 6GB RAM, system resources are not exactly a problem. OK, so I like it now.

The other thing he told me is that ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ has not been needed since Windows 98 and Windows 2000. It’s still there but it’s not actually required. I still don’t like the sound of a drive spinning when I pull the plug but he says it’s OK. Just give it a minute to power down before putting it away.

I easily found a Windows 7 driver for my old scanner. Thank-you Epson!

I also purchased and installed a black & white laser printer. Finally, a printer! It’s got a tray where I can stack 250 sheets of paper at one time. God, I love that! It sounds like a vacuum cleaner but my old one clattered and had only manual paper feed so this is better. I finally got to print the document that I was trying to print on August 18th.

UPS will be here tomorrow to pick up the old computer. The box is about half the size of my kitchen so that will be good.

I still have a few superficial complaints:

I don’t like the inconsistent font sizes. Browser fonts are tiny and have to be manually adjusted on every page. (That’s not superficial; it’s huge.)

Things can suddenly act whacky. For instance Shift+r stopped working and Shift+m made windows minimize. It took a reboot to fix it. Windows 7 was not necessarily responsible for this.

When windows close they fall backwards and that makes me nauseous. As you may have heard me say before, I don’t like traveling.

Other than that, it’s pretty good. I’m getting used to the navigation now; it’s not nearly as confusing as it looked on the first day. In fact, it’s not confusing at all. It’s just a matter of trying to get an old brain to see things differently.

It’s got all that cutesy Microsoft stuff like ‘themes’ where you can customize the color of your translucent windows. You know, the important stuff.

The DELL is still whining periodically and that’s not good. According to my carpenter’s level the tower’s about 1/8″ off dead centre so maybe I’ll try fixing that someday.

In another post I’ll tackle Windows 7 & IPTC. Just when you think you’ve heard it all …